


Now On to the Future

by NelindeA



Series: Fragments [10]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Gen, Guess what it's all fluffy, Regarding the hiatus and why we haven't seen Dan, christmas 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 05:37:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17781572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NelindeA/pseuds/NelindeA
Summary: I'm so proud of both of them, and I want them to always do whatever makes them happy. Which is the generic thing to say, but it's true, and yeah I would like things to go back to how they were, but I get that they've been doing this for ten years and I've only been here for one. So if more changes are in store for them, then I'll probably be happier for them than I'll be sad for me.I hope so, anyway.So, this is kind of the natural end to my "Fragments" series. If they ever do something adorable or life-changing in the future I'll probably write something based on that, but, ya know, seeing as how they're on this little HIATUS I'm not expecting that to happen any time soon.Thanks for reading, and for all the kudos!! They make me happy. :)





	Now On to the Future

Dan and Phil don’t need to be together for Christmas. They’re practically joined at the hip for eleven and three quarters of the year, so there is absolutely no reason for them not to part ways at Christmas.

It was the same every year, and had been ever since they met each other. Phil would wait until the 21st or 22nd before leaving, and Dan would wait a day or two longer. He liked holding out until the very last second so that he could get away with spending as little time at home as possible, but sometimes the house seemed so empty that he would go a little earlier just because he craved human interaction. 

And then both of them would stay until the 27th, whereupon they would come home and enjoy the rest of their allotted YouTube break until after New Year’s, when they started figuring out when would be an appropriate time to start making videos again.

But this year was different. 2018 had been different for a lot of reasons, but Dan had been mostly been in control of all of those reasons. He hadn’t thought that it would extend to their little Christmas system that he completely relied on. 

Dan didn’t allow himself to hate Christmas. That was against all the rules, and also everything he stood for. If he stopped loving Christmas than there was literally no reason to live. 

But he couldn’t help slightly dreading going home, and dreading even more the one week that he wouldn’t be able to spend with Phil. Not that he and Phil needed to be together for Christmas. They never had been. This was their tradition. It was, as Phil pointed out once, their excuse to appreciate each other. And Dan was used enough to the system where he could get through the Christmas period with a decent amount of happiness. As long as nothing happened to disrupt it, he would be okay.

So how dare an old family friend decide to visit the Lesters on the 19th, and Phil deciding he really should be there for that? 

Dan had been staring at his YouTube ideas folder, like he had several times in 2018, when Phil came into the room holding a phone. Dan sighed and closed his folder, which was also a familiar action by now, and then looked up at Phil, who was holding the phone out. “It’s my mum,” he said. “She wants to talk to you?” 

“Oh no, what have I done?” Dan asked in mock panic, taking the phone and holding it to his ear. “Hello?”

“Hello dear, how are you?” Mrs. Lester’s smooth voice came across the line. Dan always secretly called her Molly Weasley in his mind, because she had the same effect on him that he imagined Ron’s mother would. 

“I’m good thanks, how are you?” Dan replied, glaring at Phil and wondering why he was still stood there.

“I’m doing well, Dan. So you know how we’ve invited Phil up early? I know you don’t go home until a couple of days after that, so I was wondering if you’d like to come up with him for those few gap days? I’ve a new mince pie recipe I’m going to try out on all my guests.” 

Dan wanted to cry. If Dan ever wondered where Phil’s good qualities came from, he had only to look to his mother. Kath knew. She knew that it wasn’t a matter of Dan not being able to go to his own home early. And she knew how much he’d hate being left alone for those few extra days. Dan couldn’t even understand it. He was a self-proclaimed introvert, so why did he suffer such chronic loneliness every time Phil was gone? 

Dan looked up at Phil’s face and could read nothing there. But he must have known what his mother was asking. Dan wanted to say yes. Of course he wanted to. He loved Phil’s family.

But…Dan and Phil don’t need to be together for Christmas. He’d be intruding on the Lester family tradition, as well as the Dan and Phil tradition, and he couldn’t do that. Even if Phil was doing it first by going home early. Dan wasn’t going to make it obvious to everyone how much those extra few days with Phil meant to him. 

“Thanks, but I’ll actually be pretty busy up here,” he said. “I’ll make Phil bring me back a mince pie.”

She laughed, and didn’t question it, just like Phil wouldn’t have. “I understand. The offer will still stand though, if you change your mind, of course. I hope you have a lovely time, Dan.”

“You too,” he said, hastily shoving the phone back at Phil, who took it and quickly wrapped up the conversation before looking at Dan. “Why don’t you want to come?” he asked.   
“It’ll be awkward; I know your mum, she’s going to have friends and family roaming in and out of the house every day,” Dan said. 

“Yeah,” Phil admitted. “Okay, but you know you’re allowed to change your mind, right?” 

Dan laughed. “When have I ever not exercised that power?”   
…

It wasn’t until the 18th that Dan did, however. Phil had errands to run, and was gone by the time Dan woke up. He texted Dan to say that he wouldn’t be back until close to dinner time, and although this wasn’t the first time he’d done such a thing, Dan was taking it harder than usual.

Usually he loved having the house to himself. If Phil was gone for a day Dan would do all the things that he knew annoyed Phil. He didn’t have to be with Phil every second. He was okay if he knew Phil was just out shopping and would be back by the evening. It was just that he knew Phil was leaving the next day, and he wouldn’t see him again for a week and a half. And there was all of Christmas to get through. This thought was enough where, after he initially got up and wandered into the kitchen, he wandered back to bed and just lay there until Phil came home. 

Phil walked past Dan’s door and stopped when he saw Dan. “Please don’t tell me you’ve been there all day,” he said. 

Dan didn’t say anything. Phil came in and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Is today a bad one?” he asked. 

Dan looked up at him. “I want to go with you,” he said. 

Phil nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

Dan was fine after that. He was completely himself on the plane ride there, and he handled seeing all of the strangers crowding the Lester home pretty well. It was easier when he saw how uncomfortable Phil was, because then he could just laugh at Phil’s awkwardness. Most of the people claimed to know or remember Phil from years past, and Phil would just blush and not know what to say. But Dan was a designated stranger, and was politely treated as such. He and Phil thoroughly enjoyed themselves for those couple of days, and on the night before Dan was to leave, both of them felt glad that they had still honored their tradition, though it was a little more unconventional this year. 

Phil wandered into the lounge to see Dan sitting as close to the fire as possible, hunched over his phone. 

“Hey,” Phil said. 

“Hey,” Dan replied.

“What’cha doing?”

“My room is cold, so I’m not going in it until I start sweating.”

“You know we have like a thousand blankets, right?”

“My bed is warm,” Dan laughed. “But I have to get in it for that to be applicable.” 

“Oh.” Phil sat down on the sofa opposite him, and began staring into the fire. Dan glanced up, put his phone away, and stared at it as well. 

Phil put his foot out to kick Dan’s. “Why’d you come?” he asked. 

Dan made no movement, nor any indication that he’d heard for a while. Finally he ventured, “Because I don’t know how much longer we have.” 

“What does that mean?” Phil asked. “Contrary to popular belief the world is not going to end just yet.”

“But ours might.”

“Stop being cryptic, Dan. What’s on your mind?” 

Dan pulled his eyes away from the fire to meet Phil’s. “Us. Dan and Phil. What happens next for us?”

“We keep doing what we’ve always done. We make videos, and we keep looking for new ways to make people happy.”

“Then why’d we go on a hiatus?” Dan asked in a broken voice.

“I didn’t go on one. The gaming channel did, and you did. But you promised that you’d be back, and eventually, our gaming one will too.”

“And what if I don’t want to come back?”

Phil blinked and looked away. “Do you not want to?”

“I don’t know.” Dan’s eyes returned to the fire. “I don’t know.”

There was a long pause, and then Phil gently asked, “What do you want, Dan?”

“I don’t know,” Dan said again, in a mournful tone, because he hated giving that answer, he hated not knowing. 

“Well,” Phil said slowly. “What can you do to figure it out?” 

Dan sometimes marveled at Phil’s wisdom. Especially when he could be so naïve and innocent a lot of the time. “I want to disappear,” he whispered. 

“Disappear?” 

“Yeah.” Dan nodded, slowly at first, and then more firmly. “Not yet. I’ll finish Christmas, and I’ll do the viewing party for our DVD. But otherwise, I want out. I don’t want to do anything, I don’t want to show my face, and I don’t want to know what they’re thinking and saying.”

“That’s going to be difficult.” 

“I don’t think so, actually,” Dan said, surprising himself. “I mean I’ve been on a hiatus for this long anyway.”

“Yeah, but you still did stuff for them and they still saw you. Are you sure you’ll be able to cut yourself off from them?” 

Dan smiled. “You make it sound like I’m so dependent on them.”

“I mean, you kind of are,” Phil said, smiling as well. “And you have been for ten years. Not as much as they are on you, probably, but you do care about them or else you wouldn’t still be here.”

Dan didn’t respond to that, because he was thinking of how to say the next thing. “And what about us?” he asked finally, choking on the words a little bit.

“What about us?”

“Friends for ten years. Are we still friends, Phil?”

Dan waited a moment for Phil to answer, and when he didn’t, he turned to look at him. Phil was squinting at him. “Where is this going?” he asked. 

“How long are we going to do this?” Dan asked. “How long are we going to be Dan and Phil? How long are we going to live together, and be in every single aspect of each other’s lives?”

“For as long as we want to.”

“And how long will that be?” 

“Dan,” Phil said anxiously. “Do you not want to? Because if there’s any part of you that doesn’t…if there’s any part of you that wants to disappear from my life as well as theirs…”

He didn’t finish, and Dan didn’t complete the sentence. “I don’t want to disappear from your life,” he said finally. “But what scares me is that I don’t even think I could.”

“Oh, I think you could.”

“Really?” Somehow Dan wasn’t expecting that response.

“Yeah.” Phil brought his knees up to his chest and leaned back, burrowing into the sofa. “You’re very independent, you know. You probably think you’re not, because you always have me there to rely on, and you know I’ll always support you, but if you want to do something you do it. If you want to try something out, you do it. If you ever took it into your head to try not living together…I think…I think you’d do it.” 

Dan began anxiously tapping his palm with his phone. “But your mother asked me here because she thought I wouldn’t be able to stand these extra days alone. And I came because she was right.”

“You said it was because you didn’t know how much longer we have.”

“Because I don’t. I don’t know. I don’t know if us still living together is the best thing, and I don’t know if I still want to be a YouTuber, and I don’t know how much longer both of us can keep this up before real life catches up with us and we have to start thinking about what comes…after.”

Phil was silent. “So what do you know?” 

Dan was silent as well for several minutes. He knew, logistically, that he’d stumbled into a fairy tale, or a dream, ten years ago, and his time with it had been up long ago. Every day that he remained in this world he was on borrowed time, and he never knew when he’d have to wake up to the real world. 

But in spite of his fears, he did know one thing that he absolutely wanted. “I know that I want us to keep living like we’re living,” he said. “I know that I want that more than anything.”

Phil nodded, “You just don’t know how that’ll work in the long run?” 

“Exactly.” That was the other thing about Phil. He could sometimes sum up hours of Dan’s thoughts into one sentence.

“Well,” Phil said slowly. “I think we can still do that for now. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, and I doubt that it’s holding either one of us back. I’ll return to YouTube in a couple weeks, because I want to, and that way they hopefully won’t come after us with pitchforks. But I’ll leave you out of it. You can do whatever exploring and thinking you need to, and I’ll just not mention you until you’re ready for me to.” 

Why was Phil so incredible? What did Dan do to deserve him? There were so many things Dan wanted to say, but all he could do was look across the way and smile at him, and Phil’s smile was enough for him to think that everything would be okay. 

“I don’t want to leave YouTube entirely,” Dan said eventually. 

“No?” 

“No.” Dan shifted his position so that he was lying on his back, with one arm under his head. 

“Well that’s something you didn’t know five minutes ago. What changed?”

“I stopped freaking out.” Dan closed his eyes. “You stopped me freaking out.”

“I didn’t say anything.” Dan could hear the smile in his voice.

“Yes you did and you know it.”

“Well, yeah, I probably did. I’m amazing that way.” 

“Shut up you turnip,” Dan murmured affectionately.

“Okay.” Phil was silent after that, and as Dan began falling asleep he wasn’t even really sure if Phil was still there. But he knew he didn’t really have to worry, because he knew Phil would always be there. 

Always. 

And Phil shouldn’t have to worry about whether Dan would always be there, so that was one resolution that Dan made before he completely lost consciousness. Whatever he chose to do, he would remain in Phil’s life.

The last thing he was aware of was someone brushing his hair away from his forehead, and of a faraway voice saying, “I’m so proud of you, Dan.”

He smiled. 

Dan and Phil don’t need to be together for Christmas. But they do need to be together in everything else, and that basic need was never going to change.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so proud of both of them, and I want them to always do whatever makes them happy. Which is the generic thing to say, but it's true, and yeah I would like things to go back to how they were, but I get that they've been doing this for ten years and I've only been here for one. So if more changes are in store for them, then I'll probably be happier for them than I'll be sad for me.
> 
> I hope so, anyway.
> 
> So, this is kind of the natural end to my "Fragments" series. If they ever do something adorable or life-changing in the future I'll probably write something based on that, but, ya know, seeing as how they're on this little HIATUS I'm not expecting that to happen any time soon. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, and for all the kudos!! They make me happy. :)


End file.
